William Mulholland - Owens Valley

Owens Valley

The California Water Wars were the result of Los Angeles' aggressive acquisition of groundwater rights in Owens Valley for the municipal project to build the aqueduct overseen by Mulholland. Although the scheme by the Los Angeles Water Department was publicly debated before it began (because it needed voter approval for its bond financing), once passed, ex-Mayor Frederick Eaton, who had also been the superintending engineer of the Los Angeles City Water Company for nine years, stopped at nothing to acquire water rights.

Eaton, Mulholland and J.B. Lippincott used underhanded methods to obtain water rights and block the Bureau of Reclamation from building water infrastructure for the residents in Owens Valley. The regional engineer of the Bureau, Lippincott, was a close associate of Eaton, and allowed him access to inside information about water rights. He could also influence Bureau decisions that would be beneficial to Los Angeles.

As a respected public figure, Mullholland also influenced public opinion in Los Angeles by dramatically understating the amount of water available for Los Angeles' growth. Mullholland also misled residents of the Owens Valley, by claiming that Los Angeles would only take water for domestic purposes not for commercial irrigation.

Initially some residents in the Owens Valley were willing to sell and move south because of the hard economic times in California, but many were not. Those that resisted the pressure to sell until 1930 received the highest price for their land. However most farmers sold out between 1905 and 1925 receiving much less than the price Los Angeles was actually willing to pay.

In 1904 Eaton, with the help of his friend and local chief of the United States Bureau of Reclamation, J.B. Lippincott, begin buying up land in the Owens Valley under the pretense that the land would be used for the reclamation project. By July 1905, Eaton had bought up enough land to secure the land and water rights to build the aqueduct. In 1906, the Los Angeles Board of Water Commissioners voted to undertake the aqueduct project on the recommendation of Mulholland, and decided to use the Department's own resources to purchase Fred Eaton's land and water rights options. In the same year, a bond issue was approved by city voters to proceed with a feasibility study for the construction of a new aqueduct. Water Commissioners created the Bureau of Los Angeles Aqueduct and appointed Mulholland as Chief Engineer. On June 25th President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law a Congressional bill which gave Los Angeles the water rights to Owens River water. The next year voters approved the bond issue for the aqueduct's construction.

In the fall of 1908, The Bureau of Los Angeles Aqueduct began construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

By the 1920s, the aggressive pursuit of the water rights along with the diversion of the Owens River precipitated the outbreak of violence known as the California Water Wars. Farmers in Owens Valley attacked infrastructure, dynamiting the aqueduct at Jawbone Canyon, and opening sluice gates to divert the flow of water. Eventually, the city administration was forced to negotiate. Mulholland was quoted as saying he "half-regretted the demise of so many of the valley’s orchard trees, because now there were no longer enough trees to hang all the troublemakers who live there".

By 1928 the water diversions had completely drained the 100 mi² (300 km²) Owens Lake.